Pinwheels and Greenery
by Shieldage
Summary: The Charmed Ones are having a relaxing time entertaining the physical bodies of the Powers That Be when someone opens a hole in the world
1. Soft and Rounded Edges

BtVS by Whedon and ME; Charmed by Spelling and the WB; the BBC children's television series by Ragdoll Productions.

Angel Season 3 episode 'Sleep Tight' transcript and several lines of dialogue found at _BuffyWorld dot com_.

Meeting a Challenge by Weaver at _TtHFanfic dot org_

* * *

Paige Matthews waved at the smiling children. They waved back until she clicked the camera off.

"So, you have the money?" the slightly gruff baker asked.

"Here you go," she said, paying up. "Thanks for letting the kids behind the counter today."

"Hey, anything for my little boy, he seems to have got a kick out of it. When did you say this would be on TV again?"

"Depends on whether the show gets picked up for another season or not. Just playing it safe."

Some parting words and a free blackberry-drop cookie later Paige made it safely outside the shop, lugging the heavy camera equipment.

Ducking behind a tree, she used her inherited whitelighter powers to orb back to the holding dimension.

...

The Quonset hut sat on the edge of reality. It was sparsely furnished but the chairs were comfortable. Hundreds of screens decorated the walls, most relaying information from the cameras hidden in the 'flowers' outside.

The sky was a faintly glowing mist, a kind of perpetual twilight.

The grass was very green.

The main monitor showed a bulky yellow figure bouncing a huge rubber ball.

Piper Halliwell, skilled witch, sat up straighter in her chair as her sister orbed in.

"I'm back," Paige said, smiling as she plugged wires into the camera and uploaded the film for the residents to enjoy. "Anything happen?"

"I made it rain by pulling those levers," Piper said, waving her hand vaguely. "They enjoyed the puddles, but it seemed sort of useless. No sun, no rainbow, no chance of flooding."

"Yeah, but I hear they really love the Christmas snow. Thanks for filling in for me. I'm supposed to get footage like that at 'night' when they're all in bed but I was kind of distracted by some really good TV..."

"It's alright. So, this is what you're doing as part of your whitelighter training? Watching some of the largest minds of the galaxy run around like preschoolers because they grew too smart for their bodies?"

"Hey, it's free babysitting by responsible adults. Even though this bunch of Elders aren't living in... _themselves _anymore, they want their bodies well-fed, exercised and entertained."

"What were they to begin with? I can't exactly see aliens running around with that kind of antenna."

"They were humans, I guess, it didn't come up... This place just warps anybody who enters it directly, giving them some kind of weird half-life. It's a good thing that everything out there has soft and rounded edges. If one of them was hurt, we couldn't leave this hut."

"Hey, can I handle this 'pinwheel' alarm," Piper asked, grabbing the microphone. "I'm good at getting 'kids' to bed."

"Sure, no rush, they just have to be safely underground before I tell the machine it's safe to jump realities again. They're pretty high on some security measures here, but not others..."

"Where's it going this time?"

"Oh, it's just going to mimic the dimensional coordinates of some nightmarish world called Quor-Toth. Not some place anyone in their right mind would orb to, so it should be a pleasant night."

...

Angel, souled vampire and detective extraordinare, stared down the middle-aged man and younger woman who were holding his only son captive. The lawyer and her commando team weren't helping matters much either, but he did have them at gunpoint...

The immaterial and oddly wrinkled demon was being ignored by all sides. They didn't see him as much of a threat because he was intangibly out of phase and therefore impotent.

They were wrong.

Sahjhan raised his hands and shouted: "Lekko najine forkahdio!"

Flames and magical fireworks announced the creation of a large and _hungry_ looking portal grasping at the fabric of reality. The area on the other side looked suspiciously tranquil, but the demon shrugged it off and turned to face the stunned onlookers.

"What you are looking into is the Quor-Toth, the darkest of the dark worlds. So - I can widen the portal and you can all be swallowed up by a world you can not begin to imagine - or you can keep your word and kill that child," grinning evilly at Lilah and the commando team who had selfishly sought to betray him. "Now!"

"No child is getting killed on my watch," Piper yelled as she and her sister appeared on scene.

"Besides, that isn't Quor-Toth," Paige commented. "It's strongly guarded though, so no running into it either."

"Huh," Sahjahn snorted in disgust. "Maybe I can't threaten you with exile to a true hell dimension right now, but I can still expand it well beyond my ability to control. Who knows how much of LA I can wipe out. Not good for property values, you know."

"This is giving me a headache," Lilah groused. "Just shoot everybody and I'll bribe somebody to fill out the extra paperwork."

"Hello," Angel said, not noticing Holtz and Justine slowly edging towards the portal with his baby. "This is me still holding a gun on you. If we all just calm down and give Sahjahn a second I'm sure he can correct his mistake and open a portal to the real Quor-Toth... Wait, what am I saying... Don't you have somebody on retainer you can just banish him with? If it's a matter of pay, I could go halfsies."

Holtz took this moment to sweetly squeeze Justine's hand and then use all of his strength to kick her into the two witches, throwing them off-balance long enough for him and the baby to vanish into the portal.

"Connor, _nooooo_!" Angel yelled as he ran towards the portal, only to bounce off a shield hastily erected by the witches.

"I'm sorry, it's too late. If you look, you can barely see..." Paige said, grabbing his hand in an attempt to comfort him. "Let me take you to a better vantage point."

...

"So, that's it. There's nothing you can do for him?" Angel murmured around the last of his tears.

"No, once you're in there, you're pretty much stuck. You don't age either, or at least they don't... It might be different for Connor, but I don't think..."

"We'll ask around and we'll contact the Elders, but I believe that's it."

"Well, at least he seems to be happy," Angel said, looking at the newly created bright sun shining out of the video monitor. Connor's face stared out of the center of the artificially yellow sun and giggled happily. "I guess the place is better off with a sun anyway... Wait, what happened to Holtz?"

...

Inside the green mound that served as the home for the semi-intelligent bodies of four of the Powers that Be, the residents had awoken from their slumber and found a new friend.

"Whoa, what is it? What is it," the yellow one asked.

"I dunno, LaLaa," the purple one said, bending over to look at the mobile vacuum cleaner that had once been a battle-hardened hunter. "Eh-oh, whatever you are. Eh-Oh. Eh-Oh."

"It's cute," the red one said as the vacuum cleaner approached and slurped up her food. "Uh oh! It ate all my tubby custard! Bad!"

"Uh oh! Poor Po! What a Naughty Noo-Noo!" Dipsy, the green Teletubbie, yelled... and that was that.


	2. - - Hard Center

BtVS by Whedon and ME; Charmed by Spelling and the WB; the BBC children's television series by Ragdoll Productions.

Angel Season 3 episodes 'Forgiving' & 'Benediction' transcripts and several lines of dialogue found at _BuffyWorld dot com_.

* * *

... Hours Later ...

Wesley slowly swam to consciousness, aware of another presence in the hospital room. His friends had been there earlier, he was fairly certain, but the anesthesia wasn't helping matters much. His throat still ached from where Justine had sliced it open once he had fallen into her trap. It was amazing that he was still alive... but not necessarily lucky.

Angel stepped slowly into his field of view, complex emotions trailing across the vampire's face. "I understand why you thought you were right, Wesley, but you were outmatched. The prophecies were planted by someone skilled in manipulation of time, so everything you translated, the outside sources you consulted, everything... You took my baby away, to keep him safe. Heh, that I can forgive. However, you did it in such a risky way, with such a flawed plan... You're a team player, Wesley, stick to your strengths. On your own you're just going to fail. _Always_."

Angel leaned forward, took his thumb and forefinger and flicked Wesley directly between the eyes, with just a fraction of his supernatural strength. The bruise started to form immediately.

Helpless, unable to even moan in pain properly, Wesley stared into the vampire's hurt and angry eyes.

"Don't worry about Connor, Wesley. He's alive and safe, but he's never going to grow up. Kind of like you in a way. While you're here, recovering, you can make a list of all the stuff you'd like Fred and Gunn to bring to you. Everything," Angel intoned, pausing a beat. "You'd ever like them to bring to you. If I ever see you around the hotel again - _my home_ - I'll track you down to yours. While I may not be able to get in uninvited - well - I can always find myself a rocket launcher. Trust me, as someone who's nearly been on the receiving end, they don't need an invitation."

As the vampire swept out, Wesley caught a glimpse of his friends and the hope in their eyes.

Then the door swung shut, leaving him alone in the darkened room.

* * *

... Some Days Later ...

The sun rose, giggling, over the horizon as the holding dimension settled down to mimic the dimensional coordinates of HollowEarth.

Four bulky shapes emerged from their grassy bunker to greet the dawn.

Paige Matthews, white-lighter in training, recited their names into the microphone in a kind of litany.

Seated next to her, Wesley smiled, despite everything that had happened to him over the last few weeks.

"So, they do this every 'day'," he mused, watching the various monitors around the protected Quonset hut. "If you don't do it, will they forget their names?"

Paige grinned slightly and fluttered the pages of script. "I honestly have no idea. It's sort of like in Gremlins where they give you a list of must-dos and must-nots without explicit reason... I'm still surprised you managed to get approval to come here."

"As am I. I had barely talked to my second contact before I found the invitation waiting for me. The _final_ resolution of this... corrected Nyazian prophecy must be pretty important to some of the higher-ups, maybe even as high up as one of their," he said, vaguely waving at the brightly-colored figures. "Disembodied, near omnipotent brains."

Deciding this was a good a moment as any, Paige stood up and focused her attention on a monitor displaying the sun-with-a-baby's-face, the glowing orb that had once been Connor, the near-human child of two vampires. "Sunlight," she announced to the world as she telekinetically orbed a piece of it to her.

A coherent ball of plasma appeared in her hands. With one eyebrow raised and a weird expression on her face, she passed it to Wesley.

"Out of everything in the world," Wesley mused to himself. "I never expected it to feel like warm cookie dough."

Unconsciously, he touched the reddened wound on his neck.

"Before you leave, I could heal that scar for you, or at least I could try," Paige said, frowning. "My powers have increased with my new... responsibilities, but they're still-"

"No need. This scar, however new, is as much a part of me as my memories."

The world vibrated and Wesley reappeared in his apartment, where there was a message waiting for him on his answering machine...

...

Having followed the instructions left for him, Wesley stood on the edge of balcony above a dimly lit club, waiting for something to happen.

"I see you got my invitation," said a female voice behind him.

"Lilah," Wesley replied, turning to face her. "Obviously."

"I thought the 'come alone' was a particularly ironic touch," drawled the representative of the evil law firm. "I mean, how else would you come... Wait, what's with the thing wrapped in a throw rug?"

"That can wait, if you didn't call me about it, I'm more interested in what you brought me here for."

"Just a familiar face, down in the crowd," she said, waving at Justine Cooper, the woman who had stolen Connor and slit Wesley's throat. "You can tell from here that she's being tailed. You might not find their faces as familiar, but I bet you can guess what they are."

"Vampires," Wesley said, straightening up. "If this is some kind of test, with a commando team ready to raid the bar at a moment's notice, I suggest you call them in now," he sagely advised, unwrapping the cloth bundle. "Justine should still have the jar containing Sahjahn, unless she's sold it already... What I have here is the missing piece of the prophecy."

Lilah stared in awe as the glowing object was revealed. Wesley's brow furrowed in apprehension because, although the room visibly brightened, the rays of the miniature sun had no effect on the vampires roaming below.

...

An hour or so later, in the dark cave that had been the sanctuary of the brutal, time-shifting demon Sahjahn, Wesley and Lilah huddled around the urn the demon's physical body had been banished to.

"You may have the honor," Wesley stated. Lilah smiled sweetly and popped off the top.

Smoke billowed out, forming into the - very - solid form of Sahjahn. He opened his mouth to make a snide and well-worded comment on the uselessness of trying to kill him now that the one being fated to kill him had been shoved out of reality. Before he could get the words out, someone from behind him loosed a crossbow bolt with the sunbeam tied to it.

The bolt pierced Sahjahn's chest, the coherent fist of light mixed with what passed for his internal organs and he exploded in a shower of multiphasic sparks.

Angel stepped out of the shadows, pleased he'd been able to dispatch the villain without having to listen to any more of his mouth.

"I notice you didn't shoot me," Wesley said, brushing himself off.

"I only had one shot, so I thought, why not aim for the lesser of two evils," Angel replied, eliciting a dark chuckle from Wesley as they disappeared down the corridor.

Lilah stayed behind, the beeps from her cellphone's keypad echoing in the darkness.

"The mission was a complete success and the coherent sunlight holds properties I can't even begin to comprehend. I suggest we raid the Teletubbies' holding dimension as soon as-," her words broke off in shock as a hand emerged from the telephone, grabbed her by the throat and lifted her up into the air. "I'm sorry, sir," she gasped in apology. "I had no idea one of them_ was _you."

The hand released her and she fell to the cave floor, gasping for breath.

The possessed cellphone hung in mid-air for a moment before exploding in a blinding flash of light.

Lilah's main worry was that she had just torpedoed her next promotion.


End file.
